Plunge into Darkness
by Silimay
Summary: Only weeks after Amara transfers to Hogwarts as a result of her parent's divorce, she is is plunged into a terrifying plot to take over the school. Haunted by fear, Amara doesn't realize the truth behind her living nightmares until it is too late...
1. Chapter One

Chapter One  
  
A great gray owl soared free above the Hogwarts grounds, aiming straight for the west tower. Its feathers were a rather somber shade of dull brown, belying its name, and a heavy, dark-colored ring framed its face. Large, formidable yellow eyes, situated so close to its beak that the owl appeared almost comical, regarded the castle below it with a sharp expression. Here was an owl who did not like to be disturbed unless the need was of utter importance.  
  
Apparently he had deemed the letter tied carefully to his right talon worthy of his time, for it was with a respectful nature that the bird alighted on one of the windows of the Owlery. He was immediately quite surprised to find himself in a room with hundreds of birds more or less similar to himself, of all shapes, colors, and sizes. One of them---a large great-horned owl---noticed him immediately and flew straight to his side.  
  
The two birds regarded each other for a moment with that silent communication common amongst animals.  
  
You're lost, aren't you? thought the great-horned, rather bemusedly.  
  
The newcomer looked away slightly, nursing his pride. This tone was undoubtedly one of What's it to you? It's not your business.  
  
The great-horned, ignoring this, peered at the letter in the stranger's talon. He read enough of the scribbled address to know immediately where the owl was headed. He promptly shot a look at the newcomer that plainly said Follow me and took off, flying gracefully out the window.  
  
The great gray lifted his huge wings and sailed out into the air after him. His leader led him a small distance above Hogwarts to a small tower towards the back of the castle. When he was sure that the newcomer knew where he was going, he turned back towards the owlery.  
  
The great gray couldn't help but feel a little irritation---since when did other owls show him where he was headed? He was supposed to know where he was going by the address on his letter. The directions simply hadn't been specific enough. The owl inwardly cursed---if it is possible for an owl to do such a thing---the foolish human who had addressed the envelope.  
  
He swerved towards the only open window of the tower, and landed there a little awkwardly, thrusting his head through it in order to peer inside.  
  
A tall man with a thick, long white beard and strangely-shaped pieces of glass set over his nose surveyed the bird for a moment before ushering him inside with a wave of his hand. The owl complied, promptly offering his leg and the dog-eared envelope attached to it. The man untied the string very carefully, removed the letter, and offered a treat to the owl. He accepted it gratefully and flapped noisily over to perch upon a chair by the man's desk, obviously waiting for him to hurry up and read the whatever urgent news he had brought.  
  
"Must get that window enlarged," muttered Dumbledore to himself. With a casual flick of his wand he set it right. He then turned, curiously, to the letter, slitting the envelope open and pulling the folded piece of parchment out of it.  
  
Professor Albus Dumbledore,  
  
I am very sorry to have disturbed you, but my father and I moved to England a week ago, from Canada (where I attended the Salem Academy of Magic), and I would like to know if it would be possible for me to transfer to Hogwarts. I have all the papers necessary; I can send them to you if you'd like.  
The supplies I used at Salem probably will be about the same ones I need for Hogwarts (I brought them with me when we moved) but if I need more it would be no trouble to buy them.  
I will be in fifth year.  
Again, sorry if I am disturbing you.  
  
---Amara Aramanth  
  
Dumbledore surveyed the letter a moment through the half-moon spectacles over his blue eyes, as if to discern its validity. The girl is certainly polite enough, he thought. But she givens no reason at all for why she moved to England. And why on earth did she not have her father write the letter? The thought seemed to puzzle him for a moment. Finally he popped a lemon drop into his mouth and reached for the long black quill lying on his desk. Taking a sheet of parchment from the drawer, he wrote quickly:  
  
Ms. Aramanth,  
We will be happy to accept you into Hogwarts as soon as the required transferring paperwork is completed.  
In light of the recent events, I will be sending someone personally to your residence in order to confirm it for the records. Since the train platform for the Hogwarts Express is well hidden to ensure safety from non- magical eyes, he will also show you the way to it and how exactly to get through.  
Term starts on September 1st. I hope to see you then.  
  
Sincerely,  
  
Albus Dumbledore  
  
Headmaster, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry  
  
He folded the letter and slid it into an envelope. The great gray, who had been waiting patiently upon the velvet-lined chair, pointedly held out his talons. Dumbledore tied the new envelope to his claws with the same black cord from the previous one. Just as the owl lifted into the air and sailed through the newly enlarged window, Dumbledore raised his wand, pointing it carefully towards the owl, and muttered, "Insignio."  
  
**********  
  
"Amara!"  
  
Amara started at the sound of her father's loud voice. "Yes?" she called.  
  
"Get this bloody owl off of me!"  
  
Grinning quietly to herself, Amara tore up the stairs to the second floor. Her father---a tall, rather stocky man with a thick beard---had an enormous owl clutching frantically to the top of his head.  
  
"Drefan!" she scolded, hurrying up to them. She held her arm up to her father's head, and the owl detached himself from the hair entangled in his claws and climbed onto it.  
  
"Never did see what you magic folks found in owls," grunted her father, massaging his head. "Terrible birds, they are. Don't know why I bought you one of the damned things in the first place..."  
  
Drefan, sensing that he was the topic of a rather unglorifying conversation, shot an extremely dark look at Amara's father and turned back to her, holding out his talons.  
  
She was somewhat surprised to see that he had brought back a letter with him. She untied it carefully with slender fingers. Drefan, in return, was rather pleased to have his leg back. He took off hurriedly, flying down the hall to the old laundry room which Amara and her father had appropriately designated "The Owl Closet," as that was where the owl stayed and slept when he wasn't off carrying letters. Amara had stocked it with plenty of dead branches from the forest-like wilderness around her new house; thus the owl had all of the perches he could want.  
  
Her father stepped curiously towards her, to read the new letter over her shoulder. The envelope was unmarked. She slit it open, pulled out and unfolded the letter, and they both read quickly what it had to say.  
  
"What's this about sending someone 'personally' to our residence?" growled her father.  
  
Amara shook her head. Misgiving had shot into her heart the moment she read that; she wasn't ready to meet an English wizard. "I've no clue. I put no return address on the other envelope, so I don't see how the Headmaster could even find our house in the first place---much less send---"  
  
Suddenly, as if on cue, there came a loud knocking from below. Her father shot a bemused look at her, and they both headed downstairs.  
  
Amara edged open the door cautiously.  
  
A tall man---taller than even her father---stood at the entrance. He had black hair that swept down to his shoulders, pallid, sallow skin stretched thinly across his face, and flashing, ebony eyes that glinted and glimmered with an inner malevolence so strong that she shuddered. The rustling black robes that swept to his feet were all the indication she needed that he was a wizard, and likely the one that Dumbledore had (rather quickly) sent.  
  
Everything about this man is black, thought Amara. She gaped openly at him for a moment before regaining her composure. "Yes?" she asked. If it weren't for the comforting form of her father beside her, she feared her words might have been more squeaks than recognizable forms of the English language.  
  
He cleared his throat, and she was relieved---no, not relieved, pleased--- to see that there was the slightest touch of hidden nervousness about his features. He wasn't as emotionless and untouchable as he seemed. "Is this the residence of Amara Aramanth?" he asked. His soft, silky voice was every bit as smooth as his robes.  
  
Fear obstructed her throat so that she could scarcely breathe, much less talk. She merely nodded mutely. What is it about this man that it is so intimidating? she wondered. He's being perfectly courteous, even if he is a bit... cold. Why am I so afraid?  
  
"The Headmaster sent me," said the man, his voice tinted with the hint of a British accent that she could not help but notice. He shot a calculating look at her father, and then turned his cold, questioning eyes back to Amara. "You have the transfer forms?"  
  
She nodded again, managing to get her vocal chords back into condition. "I'll go get them," she said, hurriedly turning back into the house.  
  
Just as she left her father said in his gruff, low voice, "Would you like to come in?"  
  
Amara heard Snape reply very coldly, "Thank you, but I believe I'll just stay out here." The tone of his voice seemed to suggest that their house was absolutely the worst he'd ever laid his eyes on, and that he'd rather eat dungbeetles than set a foot inside.  
  
What right does he have to sound like that? Amara thought. Sure, it may be a little dilapidated... but it's a house like any other. He doesn't have to act like its got poison smeared all over the walls.  
  
She hadn't felt this frightened in years---and it was all over the wizard Dumbledore had sent to "show her the way" to the train platform. If all the people at Hogwarts made her feel like this, she might as well just drop out before term even started! Her social life had been rather pitiful even at Salem; she dreaded to think what it would be like at a school in an entirely new country, where everyone already knew each other. She found herself fearing Hogwarts with a feeling of apprehension and foreboding that made her stomach go cold.  
  
After a moment she pulled herself together and made her way slowly up the stairs towards her room, whereupon she found her old trunk and began to shuffle through it for her transfer papers. When she found them, she checked them to make sure they were completely filled out before heading back downstairs.  
  
The man was standing in almost the exact same position as he'd been in before she'd left, waiting there silently with impatience written obviously across his face. His arms were crossed and his robes were rustling slightly in the light breeze. He turned his head as she came towards him, and his black eyes met her own. For a moment he stared at her, scrutinizing her face, as if he wished to read her mind. She realized, abruptly, that the reason for this was not just that he had taken a rather instant disliking to her; it was because he didn't trust her in the least.  
  
Join the club, thought Amara.  
  
She glanced at her father. His blue eyes---the exact same color as her own-- -were starting to narrow with suspicion, but he stayed silent, watching the stranger as if to make sure that he didn't try anything. For which she was grateful.  
  
He took the transfer papers from her, barely glancing down at them before raising his eyes to her own again.  
  
"Are you a muggleborn?" he said unexpectedly.  
  
The sentence made Amara's blood go cold. In Canada she'd had nothing but trouble for the fact that both of her parents were Muggles. Surely... surely they would not have all that pureblood nonsense here, in England.  
  
Watching him very closely for any sign of a reaction to her words, she replied, "Both my parents are nonmagical."  
  
Ugh, she thought. Now he's going to ask where my mom is. And I'm going to have to tell him she's back in Canada, at our old house.  
  
To her relief, he said nothing about the absence of one of her parents. Perhaps it was just too obvious. Nor did he even bat an eyelid at the word "nonmagical." Clearly the man didn't care if her parents were both half- newt, so long as they'd properly signed the transfer forms. The reason for his question was made obvious as he turned his head slightly to address her father and said, "You won't be allowed at the train platform. It's only for witches and wizards."  
  
Her father looked as though he didn't like this new development at all, but he didn't object. "You'll take her there today?" he asked simply. The man nodded impatiently. "Do you have some sort of proof of who you are?" he added, not to be deterred from finding out what the visit was all about and whether or not he could trust the stranger.  
  
The stranger's eyes flashed with displeasure; presumably this was because he was sick of all the questions. He reached into his robes, and for a moment Amara was afraid that he was getting his wand, so that he could curse them both into oblivion. But he didn't, of course; when his hand came into view again it contained a neatly folded piece of paper, a letter. He handed it wordlessly to her father.  
  
He read it quickly, examining its seal as if to discern purely by staring at it whether or not it had been forged. Evidently Dumbledore had sent the black-robbed man with proof of his purposes. Whatever proof it was, it must have passed her father's inspection, for he handed it wordlessly back to the man and nodded briskly.  
  
Then her father turned back towards Amara, and she blushed as he leaned down and planted a kiss on the top of her head, shooting her a dazzling smile which made her feel very warm and fuzzy inside. It almost countered the negative emotions brought on by the obviously disapproving man who watched this episode.  
  
Almost.  
  
Shooting a last glance at her father---as if it were to be months until they saw each other again, instead of minutes---she followed the man outside, closing the door softly behind her. To her surprise, instead of taking her towards the street that lead to town, he led her back behind her house. "Where are we going?" she asked in a voice she knew sounded terrified even as the words left her mouth.  
  
He shot her an evaluating look, seeming to wonder why she was so frightened of him. "To a portkey," he answered at last.  
  
"There's one behind my house?" Amara asked, surprised. He nodded. She had the sense not to ask why it was there, realizing that it was probably Dumbledore's doing. No doubt he meant to make it easier for her to get to the train station when it was time for term to start. There was no doubt, also, that the portkey was unregistered; if the British ministry was anything like the ones back across the Atlantic, they would have rather eaten dungbeetles than let someone start a portkey just so it would make it easier for a new student to get to school.  
  
A moment later, as they made their way through a stretch of forest and Amara tried to memorize her surroundings so she could find the portkey later, she once again gathered up her courage, and asked the man querulously, "What's your name?"  
  
"Severus Snape," he answered harshly.  
  
No wonder he always looks so disagreeable, with a name like that, she thought.  
  
Her fears, fortunately, were starting to abate as her brain finally realized that the man---Snape---didn't mean her any harm (physical harm, anyway) and with this came a new measure of boldness.  
  
"What do you do at Hogwarts?" she asked, and flinched a little as the angry, impatient look flashed once again into his eyes.  
  
"I'm a professor," he said abruptly, in a tone that said he'd had quite enough questions. "I teach potions," he added when he saw that Amara had opened her mouth to ask yet another question. She smiled wryly at his irritation---which, naturally, irritated him even more---and lapsed into silence.  
  
Snape finally stopped about fifty meters from her house. Amara looked to the place he was staring at, and saw an old, nearly shattered flowerpot, half buried in dirt and leaves. She smiled again, ever so slightly. It was the most dilapidated portkey she had ever seen.  
  
Snape glanced up at her as she came to stand directly behind the portkey, an unreadable expression---almost certainly an unpleasant one---lingering in his dark eyes. Amara realized that she and Snape would have to be in direct contact with each other as they touched the key, in case something were to go wrong. The thought repulsed her. Fear returned to her heart with a familiar tightening feeling in her chest.  
  
Bracing herself for some verbal battering on Snape's behalf, she held out her hand. For a moment he looked down at it as if it were some kind of particularly ugly sort of slug; then, surprisingly, he took it into his own hand with a warm and strangely gentle sort of grip.  
  
Then he reached out his other hand slowly towards the flowerpot. Amara had a short glimpse of his thin fingers coming into contact with the old clay; then there was a blinding flash of light and a jolting jerk from behind her navel, and she felt herself spinning through empty space.  
  
**********  
  
Snape grimaced as he and the girl beside him were roughly deposited at the edge of a loud and crowded street. Several near-by pedestrians stopped and cast them strange glances, as if to say Couldn't you have transported yourselves to a more appropriate place? before walking on and going about their business. The sight of people appearing out of thin air was by no means uncommon in all-magical places, especially that particular one.  
  
He hated portkeys. It had been Dumbledore's brilliant idea to set one near Aramanth's house in the first place, even though Snape himself obviously didn't agree with it. The fact was, using a portkey was about the only option. The girl's probable lack of knowledge about England coupled with the distance of her house to London left them unable to depend upon the girl to get there on her own using the old Muggle transportation methods. Since she obviously wasn't licensed to Apparate, and since the lack of any kind of a fireplace in her household cast out Floo powder as an option (which Snape equally disliked), it was decided that a portkey was the most appropriate of methods.  
  
He glanced beside him to check on the health of the girl who, unfortunately, still was tightly gripping his right hand.  
  
Her long, yellow hair was disheveled; she reached out a hand to brush it casually out her eyes. Then, almost immediately, she let out a cry of dismay. Finally letting go of Snape, she bent down to retrieve her large, wire-rimmed glasses, lying askance on the ground. The left lens had been popped neatly out of the frame. She set about to pressing it back into place, only to see that the frame had snapped. Either she had landed a lot harder than he had, or her glasses were very flimsy.  
  
She raised her large, luminous blue eyes, now free of their covering, to Snape's own. Snape waited, almost lazily, for the inevitable. Waited for the strange girl to open her overlarge mouth and ask him to set the glasses right, so that he could criticize her and point out that she, after all, had a wand and was perfectly able to do it herself. Even though she was underage and couldn't fix them even if she had known the appropriate charm, which he doubted.  
  
To his immense surprise, she must have seen in his eyes that he had no plans whatsoever of helping her, for she only lowered her eyes sadly and remained silent. Seeing that he had already gotten to his feet, she stood up, clutching the pair in her wiry hand as if it was the only thing in the world she had left, and followed him down the street.  
  
Snape wondered, not for the first time, what was so strange about the girl. Why, for one, was she so afraid of him? The moment she had she had laid her eyes upon him, her speech, expression, and eyes had been overcome by a terrible, trembling, uncontrollable fear. Much as he enjoyed the satisfaction this brought him, it was also a little unnerving. Could he really have been that intimidating, even before he had taken one point from her house?  
  
And then, when she had mastered her fears of this unknown stranger at her doorstep, she had started to ask him questions, displaying a boundless curiosity, and ripening Snape's suspicion of her all the more. The question of whether or not he could trust the girl and her eccentric father plagued Snape so that he could think of little else. That, he knew, was the real reason why the Headmaster had sent him; not because Hagrid, the ideal choice for introducing new students to Diagon Alley, was absent at the moment for the Order of the Phoenix business, but because everything about this girl aroused suspicion and Snape had a knack for rooting out those with ulterior motives.  
  
Only a year after Voldemort's rebirth---and mere months from the last strange incident at the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry of Magic (yet another wow-it's-Potter-and-he's-the-hero situation, thought Snape darkly)---a strange student from Canada, of all places, says that she and her father have moved to England (offering no explanation why) and asks to transfer to Hogwarts, where she'll conveniently be only a year behind Harry Potter, the grand and wonderful boy-who-lived. Everything about it was too much of a coincidence, Snape felt, to be trusted.  
  
Of course, there were explanations for these things. From the way the girl's eyes had gleamed when he'd asked her about the magical abilities of her parents, and from the fact that her father had been the only one around when he'd arrived at their household, Snape suspected very strongly that either Aramanth's parents were divorced or she was faking them being divorced quite well. It would explain, at least to a certain extent, why the girl had moved to England---her mother had gotten their old house out of the divorce, and her father had taken her to Europe. Somehow he had acquired a new house upon arriving there---or perhaps he'd had one to begin with...? There were easy ways to forge such things, in any case---  
  
Suddenly a small voice intruded rudely upon his thoughts. "Where are we?" the Aramanth girl asked in her terribly irritating, high-pitched voice.  
  
"Diagon Alley," he snapped.  
  
Her eyes widened a little, presumably in the fear she could not seem to hide or quench. Snape wondered, for the first time, if Amara Aramanth was all right---not physically, but mentally.  
  
"What new supplies will I need?" she was asking now.  
  
Did she expect him to psychically know which ones she had already?  
  
"What do you already have?" he said edgily, with the distinct feeling like he was asking the obvious.  
  
Oh, no, he thought a second after he'd asked it. Prepare for a huge list...  
  
She paused, doubtless mentally going over the contents of her trunk. "I already have a lot of black robes," she said. "And a pewter cauldron, and brass scales, and the like. And I have A History of Magic, and Magical Theory---"  
  
"Stop!" said Snape, gritting his teeth. Aramanth closed her mouth very abruptly. Meanwhile he reached deep into the pockets of his robes for the scrap of parchment, which Dumbledore, as usual foreseeing the problem, had given him.  
  
He withdrew it and handed it to the girl. She stared at it, her eyes widening again. She had the odd habit of doing that, he had noticed. On the paper, in Dumbledore's loopy handwriting, was a list of all the supplies that a fifth-year student who had never attended Hogwarts before would need.  
  
Snape realized, with a sinking feeling, that he was going to have to take her to a great many stores in order for her to get the things that she needed.  
  
It was going to be rather a long day.  
  
**********  
  
"Um, Professor---?" Amara broke off, feeling stupid for having already forgotten the man's name.  
  
"Snape," he replied, gritting his teeth again.  
  
"Do you have a quill?" she asked tentatively.  
  
Looking nettled, Snape reached deep into his pocket and withdrew an enormous eagle-quill, filled to the brim with ink and sealed with a strange cap that must have been made of dragon-hide. He handed it to her.  
  
Amara took the quill and turned to the list, whereupon she began to neatly check off the items that she already had. Snape shot an unnoticed glare in her direction, pondering whether or not he should chastise her for not asking for permission to mark up the list that Dumbledore had so laboriously created. (Well, he admitted to himself, laboriously was not perhaps the right word; the task had been done with only a mere flick of his wand, if truth was to be told.) He decided in the end that it was not worth the trouble. Aramanth probably would not have noticed anyway, so immersed was she in trying to remember her supplies.  
  
"Professor Snape," said Amara suddenly---Snape tried to block out her voice, but was unsuccessful---"where am I going to get all these new things?"  
  
He took the list unceremoniously from her fingers and let his eyes sweep down its contents. To his immense chagrin, only about half of the items looked to be checked off. This, thought Snape, was definitely not in the job description. He was not going to spend his entire evening shopping for a brainless Muggleborn. Especially not when there were potions to be brewed, lesson plans to be created, and a task to be performed. Never mind the fact that the girl probably hadn't brought any money with her.  
  
"At the stores here," he said vaguely as he gestured around at the bustling Diagon Alley around them, an idea creeping into his mind.  
  
She looked doubtful, and her eyes widened again. "But there are so many of them!"  
  
He looked at her suspiciously. "You had stores like these in Canada, did you not?"  
  
"Well---yes---" said Amara, getting strangely confused.  
  
"Well!" said Snape. "It shouldn't be hard then."  
  
Amara found it hard to believe that Snape had gotten a complete character change in a matter of moments. Hearing him say the words in such a congenial tone of voice was unnerving, to say the least. She looked around at the dozens of stores around them, all packed tightly together. She did not like her new professor at all, and didn't trust him not to leave her alone in a place like this, where she would get lost in a heartbeat.  
  
"You won't---leave me here?"  
  
His eyes sparkled, and she was frankly startled at how much different it made him look. His expression was positively demonic.  
  
"Only after I show you the train platform," he said, and as if he'd suddenly reminded himself of what he'd originally set out to do, he began striding rapidly away.  
  
Amara followed after him, struggling a little to keep out with his brisk strides. Finally she simply broke out into a trot. He didn't seem to notice.  
  
And then, so suddenly that she very nearly ploughed into him, he drew to a halt. He shot her an extremely unfriendly look before turning back and pulling out a long, black wand (the color is such a surprise, thought Amara dryly). She watched, curiously, as he pointed it at the seemingly normal building in front of them and muttered, "Acclaro!"  
  
The wall slowly parted, its long sides sliding silently away from each other to form a thin doorway. Snape slipped inside, and she followed after him. She heard the walls closing back behind once they had gotten safely inside.  
  
Looking up around at her new surroundings, however, Amara saw that they weren't inside. Instead they were outside---outside in a world that most certainly was not Diagon Alley. Amara found herself reeling, into an enormous and very thorny bush, presumably to hide the entrance they had just come out of. The fact that it was hidden, as well as the fact that she could hear cars roaring from a hidden highway up ahead of them, assured her that they had come back into the Muggle world.  
  
Tossing a glance behind her, she saw that the wall they had just come through now looked as impenetrable as the stone it was made of.  
  
Having familiarized herself with her surroundings, she looked up at Snape, and was immediately surprised as his expression. It was strange, closed, and a bit worried. Amara followed his gaze apprehensively to a cluster of people not far away, people that she had somehow missed in her inspection of their surroundings.  
  
Oh, dear.  
  
There were about five of them---not including, Amara saw, a baby strapped into a baby carriage---and they were all gaping dubiously at her and Snape. A woman, a man, and three small children. By their plain clothing, and their expressions, she knew at once that they were Muggles, and that they had all seen her and Snape appear out of the parting wall. Like them, they were hidden behind the thick bushes loosely lining the wall; and it was a good thing, for she didn't know what the Muggle public around the streets and stores of downtown London would do if they saw five people gaping openly at two strange people dressed in cloaks.  
  
She wondered what Snape would do. Already he had his wand out, but a Memory charm was what the situation needed, and you couldn't exactly cast the charm on five people at once. This same problem seemed to have occurred to him as well, for he was staring at them with his mouth hung slightly agape, his normal dignified stance falling to pieces. It was almost comical.  
  
Then he seemed to pull himself together. "Vulgus petrificus totalus!" he cried, pointing his wand not at one particular member of the group, but swaying it from side to side so that it encompassed all of them. Amara watched in astonishment as a thick, flat wave of blue-white magic shot out of his wand in a triangular shape, blasting the group of Muggles. Their eyes grew even wider as their legs and arms snapped together under the force of the full body bind, and they fell to the ground. Even the baby, who had been crying loudly from its carriage, fell silent.  
  
In a flash Snape was at their sides, casting Memory charms as quickly and effortlessly as though they were simply lighting spells. Amara's mouth fell open a little in amazement---she had never seen someone perform such complicated magic with such ease. It cast Snape in an entirely new light.  
  
When he was done with the memory charms, he cast a Finite incantatem upon them all, and all of the full body binds vanished at once. Amara, who had by now drawn up to Snape's side, watched the Muggle's reactions to see how severe the memory charms had been.  
  
They looked dazed and confused, staring from her to Snape. He quickly began talking to them.  
  
"You are just experiencing the after-effects of an unfortunate gas accident." Snape was lying through his teeth, and by the look on his face, he was evidently immensely enjoying it. A wry smile touched Amara's lips. "You may feel a bit fuzzy and confused," continued Snape, "but these symptoms will soon dissipate with time." (My god, thought Amara to herself. He sounds like a salesman showing off a new drug!) "Go to your home, get a few hours of bed rest, and you will feel fine." He flashed them a rather eerie-looking grin of yellow teeth. "Off you go."  
  
They turned, unsteady on their now wobbly legs, and walked like zombies out of the bushes.  
  
Amara looked at Snape. The instant the Muggles had disappeared, his old self had reappeared. It molded over him, transforming him from the happy salesman back into the cold, heartless man that he had been only minutes before, and covering his eyes with the icy sloughs of chain and mail that she had previously taken for granted. It was only now that she saw, with a cold turn of her heart, that the his black, fathomless, and emotionless eyes---more like holes than eyes, really---did by no means reflect his true self, as most people's eye's did; rather, they were a husk, an impenetrable sort of protective covering. He did not use his icy, thoughtless demeanor not as a vindictive way to make those around him feel bad, as she had first rashly and foolishly assumed. It was more than that. It was his protection, his way of hiding his true self from a world that had turned on him.  
  
For the first time, Amara found herself really and truly interested in the man before her. Just how had the world turned on him? she wondered. What had he done to deserve such venomous reprisal? And what, beneath that cold exterior, was he really like on the inside?  
  
Listen to yourself, thought Amara harshly. You sound like you're writing some kind of sentimental novel! This isn't a novel; this is Snape, the professor from hell, and if you let your guard down he'll crush you into powder.  
  
She wondered if he knew of the thoughts spiraling rampantly through her mind; even worse, she wondered if they were plastered on her face for all to see. But she must have been at least a little subtle in her contemplations, for there was no sign of any real expression on his face, apart from the sneering one he always seemed to wear.  
  
Without even a single word of the strange episode that had just passed, Snape slid through the bushes and into the Muggle world, leaving the wordless understanding that she was to follow him. She complied, having not nearly as easy a time as Snape had had with the bushes (they got terribly snagged in her robes, and she had to pause for a moment to detach them) but in the end managing to come out right beside him at the edge of a crowded street.  
  
To her surprise, he seemed to have no intentions whatsoever of either crossing it or going down it either way. He simply stopped, glaring down at her with an unmistakably impatient expression.  
  
"Yes, Professor?" asked Amara, somehow feeling that it was the appropriate question to ask even though he had demanded nothing of her.  
  
Snape raised his eyes, and following them, she saw him looking at a tall, regal-looking building a ways across the street. "That's King's Cross," he said, sounding almost bored, as if he had seen the building far too many times in his lifetime. "On September first, you go there to platform nine- and-three-quarters, to the train that will take you to Hogwarts."  
  
Amara nodded. So that's what this little escapade was about, she thought. All he had to do was show me that building over there, and he was done. Leaving me, of course, to find all the shops in Diagon Alley on my own.  
  
She got the feeling that he wasn't telling her everything---Platform nine- and-three-quarters did not sound like any ordinary type of train platform. But in the thirty or so minutes she'd been around Snape, she'd come to sense his limits, and she knew enough of them to know that it would be unwise to voice any questions of this nature.  
  
Nevertheless, she did have questions of a different sort, which pleaded to be answered. "Professor," she began, taking a nervous breath. His black eyes regarded her silently, curiously. (Ah! Curiosity! thought Amara. An non-negative emotion!) "That Vulgus spell you did back there... with the body bind," she continued. "What was it?"  
  
If truth was to be told, she had hardly heard in all of her four years of schooling of any spells that could be cast so easily upon more than one person at a time, and she rather wished to know what it was.  
  
Again, those black eyes regarded her, examining her with not such a strong malevolence as before. His voice, however, said otherwise. "You mean to say that you've never heard of the Multiple-Castings spell in all of year years of magical schooling?" he said, very scornfully.  
  
"No," admitted Amara, keeping her voice carefully adamant yet with a submissive overtone. It was a sort of experiment, to see how he would react. "I haven't."  
  
He watched her, carefully, but Amara kept her face emotionless, and finally he seemed to decide that there would be no harm in telling her. "It allows, obviously, the caster to put a charm or spell upon more than one person or animal at the same time," he replied in his quiet voice. "It is difficult to cast; that's why I used such a simple curse with it. If I had tried five Memory charms all at once the spell probably wouldn't have succeeded, and even if it had it would have completely drained me of energy."  
  
She nodded. It was what she had assumed was the answer.  
  
Seeing that she had no more stupid questions to ask of him, he gave her his departing instructions. "Go back through Diagon Alley the way we came, find the flowerpot, and get back to your house," he ordered. "Don't fiddle around with it. You can go back to get the supplies you need at a later day. Tomorrow will work fine."  
  
She did not bother telling him that she had church the next day with her father, and that it was Open House. It something they both needed to attend, since they were so new to the entire continent and certainly were not familiar with the church. She probably wouldn't be back until five o'clock in the evening.  
  
He wouldn't have understood.  
  
Still, she wondered very much why he didn't want her to just shop for her supplies then and there, on the other side of the wall. It would have been infinitely more convenient.  
  
"Remember," he added as he slid back through the bush, just before he Apparated, "Acclaro is the spell to open the wall."  
  
"I'll be able to do magic?" said Amara, surprised. "Even though I'm underage?"  
  
Snape nodded. "So many people need to perform entrance spells around Diagon Alley that the Ministry doesn't normally chastise underage witches and wizards for casting them."  
  
Amara was glad he'd told her of the spell and the rule, feeling that she'd never have remembered otherwise. How very strange England was.  
  
"Professor Snape," said Amara suddenly. He stopped, and she saw that he had been a mere moment away from Apparating. "You left your quill."  
  
For a moment, surprise seemed to flash through his face that he hadn't remembered it. He held out his fingers, and she laid the huge black sheath into his hand. He let his fingers curl gently around it, as if it had suddenly become a long-treasured possession. Then he looked at her a last time, his eyes glittering, and raised his wand. Suddenly, in a brilliant flash of light and whirling black robes, he was gone.  
  
She was abruptly and acutely aware of how alone his absence made her feel. That was one of the strange things about Amara; if she had been around a person for a long time, even one she didn't like, she felt very lonely afterwards . . . She couldn't imagine how terrible she would feel after she had to leave her father . . .  
  
Pushing the feelings aside, she had just taken out her wand so she could perform the Acclaro spell when she noticed something.  
  
This something was her vision. She could hardly see a thing, now that she wasn't looking at Snape, who had previously always been in close range. She had forgotten about her glasses, which she had been clutching tightly in her left hand throughout the entire time---broken, thought Amara bitterly, because Snape didn't want to fix them... I'll have to wait a week until September first, when I'm at Hogwarts . . .  
  
Lifting them up, she could only stare at them.  
  
Eyes widening, she saw that they were completely repaired: frame, lens, and all.  
  
Who did that? she wondered. I certainly didn't, and if someone on the street did I definitely would have noticed...  
  
She realized, dimly, that Snape had to have fixed them. He was too proud to just fix them when I was looking, she thought. It would have spoiled that selfish, careless look he seems to cultivate. So he had to do it when I wasn't paying attention... when I wouldn't notice.  
  
For a moment she just stood there, staring at them, in total and utter disbelief. He did this, she thought. For me.  
  
She stood there a moment, this thought lingering in her mind. She held on to it, cherishing it. She had been so sure that Snape hated her...  
  
She slid the glasses lightly back onto her face, and was relieved as the world slipped back into focus. Then she raised her wand, concentrated, and murmured, "Acclaro!"  
  
Relieved to see a long crack appear in the wall, as both of its sides diverged, Amara squeezed herself through, back into the magical world. 


	2. Chapter Two

Chapter Two  
  
When Amara first realized that Snape was going to leave her alone in Diagon Alley, she had been a bit terrified. But she found her way back to her house with astonishing ease; all she had to do was follow the main road, and she got to the Portkey in no time.  
  
Her father was waiting at her house. She could see that he'd been worrying about when she'd come back; his eyes lit up like twin stars when he laid his eyes upon her.  
  
"So glad that Sir Black left you in one piece," he muttered into her ear. She smiled. Her father was strange; he talked little around other people, and when he did he spoke simply, so that they tended to think he was not very bright. But when he was around Amara, he let her see his true self; a true self that was intelligent, kind, thoughtful, and nice in every way.  
  
He seemed to sense this as well, but he didn't mention anything about it. "Have some tea!" he said regally in an English accent, opening the door to their gray house as if he was a chauffeur inviting the Queen of England into a regal mansion. It was such a strange, British sort of thing to say that Amara burst out laughing. His eyes twinkled good-naturedly as he let her inside.  
  
It's going to be a short week, thought Amara. One week, and I won't see this beautiful house again for a year. Or at least, a few months, until I come back for the holidays.  
  
The part of her that was dreading Hogwarts had another addition to this mental comment.  
  
Are you sure you'll see it in a few months? it said. Are you sure you'll even come back at---  
  
Shut up! Amara told it forcefully. It was no use thinking such gloomy thoughts; it was just bad programming. Of course she would come back to her house. What bad thing could possibly happen to her at Hogwarts, rumored to be the one of the most magically secure buildings in the world?  
  
**********  
  
Only days later, when the dog calendar over the fireplace in the living room had to be changed to the month of September (a large Alaskan malamute now peered down at them, offering rather a surprising change from the dachshunds of August), Amara woke up at seven-thirty to the obnoxious howling of the magical alarm clock she had bought years before. She clapped her hands irritatedly in order to shut it up. This method was effective only in the short-term; five minutes later it went off again, with words in its previously abstract howling.  
  
"Get up, get up, or you'll be late! Get up, get up, or you'll be late! Get up, get up, or you'll be---"  
  
"Dead," finished Amara darkly as she threw the clock roughly at the ground and detangled herself from her bedsheets. It stopped wailing abruptly. "Yes, I'm talking about you, alarm-clock. Not just dead, but in pieces. And never able to annoy me again---"  
  
"Amara?" came an amused voice from outside her door. "Are you okay in there? What was that sound?"  
  
"I'm FINE!" growled Amara. She was not a morning person. "The sound was my damned magic alarm clock---"  
  
She heard her father sniggering helplessly as his retreating footsteps resounded on the creaking floor. No doubt his amusement was at the word she had just uttered. She saved curse words for times when she was very annoyed, and these times were rare...  
  
After quickly showering, she pulled on Muggle clothes, remembering that King's Cross was a nonmagical station and that it wouldn't go over well for her to appear dressed in her long, black Hogwarts robes. After pulling a brush halfheartedly through her hair---she was far too groggy to care about her appearance---she walked down the old stairs to the bottom floor.  
  
Her father was eating eggs and toast at the kitchen table, listening to one of Beethoven's piano sonatas---the Appassionata, she remembered vaguely. He had thoughtfully made her breakfast as well, the buttered, honeyed toast that she was so fond of with two boiled eggs and a glass of orange juice and grape juice mixed together. There was even a jar of ketchup to go with the eggs.  
  
To anyone else it might have looked disgusting, but to Amara, it was her favorite breakfast meal in the world.  
  
"It's your first day at Hogwarts, eh?" he said, turning down the radio as Beethoven reached a particularly loud and thunderous measure. Amara took a place opposite him at the table as she nodded in answer to his question. It was a sad nod; knowing that it was the last day she would see her father for three-and-a-half months, Amara's apprehension at what the old castle would be like had returned.  
  
"Do you need me to take you anywhere?" her father asked.  
  
"No, I'm using a Portkey." Seeing his confused look, she added, "It's something that transports you magically to another place."  
  
"So you're going directly to Hogwarts?"  
  
"More or less," lied Amara uneasily.  
  
He saw straight through her words and asked cautiously, "The Part---Port--- Portkey---is it safe?"  
  
"Yes, its very safe," she assured him, glad that he could at least know that much. "I'm leaving at about nine," she added, deciding not to add that the reason she was leaving so early was that she was terrified something would go wrong. She wanted to be able to have time to owl the Headmaster if this occurred.  
  
"I hope you have fun," he said. She could see a touch of nearly hidden sadness in his amber eyes; one of the main reasons that they'd moved to England, other than to get away from her completely anti-magical mother, was so he could spend some time with her. And now, when they finally had all of their belongings unpacked and in place, she would have to leave for a boarding school.  
  
"I will," she said, feeling every bit as depressed about leaving as her father was. "And I'll owl you," she quickly promised, "and you can owl me back---just address a normal envelope to Hogwarts, and whatever house I'm in---"  
  
"House?" queried her father. "How will I know what house you'll be in?"  
  
Amara had bought Hogwarts, A History in Diagon Alley when she had gone to get her supplies, and she had read in detail about the four houses. "I'll tell you in my letter, of course," she answered. "I'll owl you right after I get there, I suppose."  
  
"What if I can't get a hold of you? If it's an emergency, or something?"  
  
"Owl Headmaster Dumbledore, I guess."  
  
"Professor who?"  
  
"Dumbledore," said Amara. "D-U-M-B-L-E-D-O-R-E."  
  
"What a strange name," said her father, looking amused as he bit into his toast. "Just address it to 'Professor Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts'?"  
  
She nodded. "That'll do."  
  
"I guess you're all set, then..." he said.  
  
Once Amara finished her breakfast she set about to do some last-minute packing. It was then that she had to confront something that had been bothering her: how was she going to carry her trunk, made freshly much heavier than it had been by the increase in all the supplies, all the way to the Portkey, through Diagon Alley, and to King's Cross? If only she wasn't underage... a lightening charm would have been just the thing if only she was allowed to perform magic. With this not being an option, she wasn't sure exactly what she would do.  
  
Her father, luckily, saw the problem immediately as he stepped into the living room, and he had a solution.  
  
"Why don't we put wheels on it?"  
  
"Wheels?" Amara repeated, a bit confused. Four years in the magical world had almost completely distanced her from all of the Muggle ways to solve technological problems. "But... that would take too long..."  
  
"No it wouldn't!" said her father, looking happy that he would be putting his rather impressive carpenter skills to work. "You have twenty minutes before you have to leave, and I'll have it done in half that time..."  
  
He retreated to the tool cupboard they kept in the laundry room and returned with a thick dowel, a small saw, several screws, and two large wheels. They were the perfect size.  
  
Her mouth dropped open. "Where did you get the wheels?" she asked, not being able to imagine how or why he would have brought them all the way from Canada.  
  
"Chopped them off of an old wagon that the old owners of the house left in the garage," he replied. His eyes had that familiar gleam that he always got from working with wood. "They're perfect!"  
  
Still not seeing how he would manage to put the wheels on the long and heavy trunk in such a way that she would be able to easily slide it across the rough cobblestone ground of Diagon Alley, she watched for an amazing ten minutes as he carefully attached the wheels to the trunk. He even went so far as to attach a handle to the other end of the trunk so that she could pull it.  
  
"Its perfect!" Amara exclaimed happily, astonished at how easy it now was to pull the massive trunk around; it was still heavy, but the wheels reduced an impossible task to what was simply a difficult one, and for that she was grateful.  
  
Her father smiled, gratified that she had liked it. He went and put his tools up.  
  
"Do you want to come with me to the Portkey?" Amara asked, looking up at him with her bright blue eyes. She felt that he deserved something in return.  
  
He nodded.  
  
So at nine o'clock her father went and turned off the Beethoven sonata, and Amara fetched Drefen and carried his cage out the door. He hooted happily. Her father wheeled her trunk over the doorway and onto the rough grass outside.  
  
He followed her into the forest behind their house, to the Portkey. When she'd reached it she went and pulled him into a hug. He smiled at her. "You'll have great fun," he assured her, seeing straight through her cheery exterior into the worries she nourished inside. "I'll see you at Christmas!"  
  
"Goodbye, father!" said Amara, rather sadly. With the owl's cage in one hand and the handle of her trunk in the other, she touched the old flowerpot with her foot, and found herself spinning away into space.  
  
**********  
  
After she'd gotten to Diagon Alley, it took Amara forty-five minutes to get to King's Cross. For a moment she lingered, bewildered, between platforms nine and ten, wondering if she was at the right place after all; but a little experimentation was all it took to reveal the trick of walking through the barrier.  
  
Once she had, she found herself wishing that she hadn't left herself so much time to spare. She had expected the platform to be crowded with students and professors, it being the day on which term started. Instead the place was nearly empty. She supposed that this was surely the result of it being over an hour until the train was supposed to leave...  
  
Not sure whether boarding the train so early was permitted---for all she knew, it still had another stop to make before eleven o'clock, though she thought this possibility extremely unlikely---Amara decided to sit down on a vacant wooden bench and wait to see if anyone showed up. If she could muster up her nerve, she might be able to ask any newcomers about the train, the Sorting, and Hogwarts in general.  
  
In the meantime she took out Hogwarts, A History from her trunk and set about reading it.  
  
She quickly lost track of time. Soon it was ten thirty, and students were starting to show up and board the train. (But no professors, thought Amara; they probably go early, so they can set up their classrooms and plan their lessons.) By then being totally immersed in her book, and too nervous to start a conversation with a stranger, Amara retreated further into her void of solitude and ignored everyone around her.  
  
Fortunately---or unfortunately, depending on how one looked at the matter--- the students now milling around the platform made it difficult for her to continue with this strategy. Many of them stared at her openly. She tried to ignore this and continued reading her book.  
  
"Is that Hogwarts, A History?" asked a feminine voice in rather a bossy tone from behind her. Startled, she looked around to see a girl with long, bushy brown hair and a badge on her robes reading "Prefect" staring down at her.  
  
"Oh, um, yes, it is, actually," Amara said nervously, stumbling over the words. She was uncomfortably aware of the fact that the girl could probably hear her accent.  
  
She looked at her with a trace of suspicion. "You're new?"  
  
"Oh---yes, I am," answered Amara.  
  
"What year will you be in?"  
  
"Fifth."  
  
"You're a transfer student?"  
  
"Yes. From Canada," replied Amara, wondering how much more she would have to explain this fact.  
  
"I've never heard of a transfer student at Hogwarts before," said the girl in that same bossy tone, her look of suspicion lingering. Some of Amara's apprehension must have shown on her face, for the girl smiled suddenly. It was a relief to see the smile.  
  
"Sorry if I'm a bit cross," said the girl. "Its just that all those things that have been happening... ah... well..." She stopped suddenly at the confused look on Amara's face.  
  
What things?  
  
"My name's Hermione Granger," the girl finished hastily.  
  
"Mine's Amara Aramanth."  
  
"Hermione! What are you doing?" said a third voice, and she saw a tall red- haired boy come up to stand behind Hermione, looking at Amara curiously.  
  
"Talking to this girl," Hermione said matter-of-factly. "She's new."  
  
"New?" said the boy, gaping at her. "A Hogwarts student?"  
  
Amara wished very much that the boy wouldn't stare at her so. It was attracting attention; people around them were whispering to each other and pointing at her. Suddenly she felt like she wanted to sink into her shoes.  
  
Hermione nodded. "A transfer student from Canada," she replied.  
  
"A transfer student from Canada?" came a third voice.  
  
Another boy came up. Black, messy hair spilled over his head, and bright green eyes regarded her curiously through a pair of wire-rimmed glasses.  
  
Amara was disconcerted to find that all three of the newcomers were still staring at her.  
  
"Uh. shall I. er. go ahead and get on the train?" she said feebly to them, gesturing to the mammoth feat of engineering which lay gleaming behind her.  
  
"Sure..." said the redhead vaguely. Suddenly all three of them were staring at a spot somewhere above her left shoulder. She turned around to see whom they were staring at.  
  
A thin boy with flashing gray eyes, silvery-blonde hair, and skin nearly as pale as Snape's had been was glaring intensely at the trio she had just spoken with.  
  
"Well, well," he drawled, in a soft and very viscous voice. "I see the Mudblood lovers are already gathered... having a meeting, I suppose, on what Muggle trash they're going to associate with next..."  
  
Hermione and both boys had tensed visibly just upon seeing the newcomer, but it was the second boy's reaction which interested Amara the most.  
  
Hatred poured into his eyes like fire, shining out of them with all the intensity of the sun at noon. Suddenly his hand was plunged into his robes and his wand was in the air, and in a fraction of an instant, the thin, slightly scrawny boy Amara had just been looking at was transformed into a powerful man with all the appearance of an enormous tiger as it prepares to strike its prey.  
  
Even the new boy, whose silent and viscous hatred seemed almost to match that of his enemy, seemed surprised at the intensity of the green-eyed boy's loathing. He actually took a step back, though the malevolence in his eyes and words did not diminish in the slightest.  
  
"That trick you did last year was good, Potter," he hissed. "Thought you could get away with it, did you? Well I've got news for you---if you try something like that again---"  
  
The animosity around the second boy was so apparent that it was almost tangible. He took a step towards the boy, his eyes blazing. "If you're talking about the incident on the train, Malfoy," he said in a voice that was startling with its coldness, "rest assured that I am absolutely satisfied with what we did to you and that my only regrets are that the curse didn't do more than what it did."  
  
Infuriated by the implications of his remark, the boy---Malfoy, he had been called---had opened his mouth to say something which was doubtlessly very rude when the verbal war was interrupted by an outside object. This object was Amara, sitting meekly upon the bench between the two offending parties.  
  
"Who're you?" he said incredulously, staring at her.  
  
She cleared her throat very nervously. "Amara Aramanth. I'm---I'm a fifth year."  
  
The glare he was directing at her had grown into a look that could be likened to the way an aristocrat stares at a particularly nasty clump of dung attached to his shoe.  
  
"A fifth year?" he repeated, as if he hadn't quite heard what he said. "A new fifth year?"  
  
"A transfer student," Amara muttered, casting a dark glance at him. She was certain that it would be only a moment before her Muggle heritage was out in the open, and when this occurred, her only protection against him would vanish. "I just moved to England."  
  
"And you're not a pureblood," he said, apparently using her last name along with her decidedly Muggle clothing to deduce this. His words formed a statement, not a question, and somehow there was an undercurrent of pure loathing to them.  
  
Amara was sick of pureblood prejudices among wizards, having encountered it around every corner in Canada, and she had quite had enough. She could feel the delicate casing she wrapped herself in---the nervous shyness, the fearful timidity---shattering violently to pieces as her true self poured in. It was much, much different than how she acted on the outside; it was sharp, cold, and laced with a hatred nearly as strong as that of the green- eyed boy.  
  
She was sick of being put down for having Muggle parents, when her magical abilities were equal to---if not surpassing---all the purebloods she had ever known.  
  
"No," she growled, "I am not a pureblood. Quite the opposite. I am a Muggleborn." She hissed the word as though it were an obscenity. "Neither of my parents have a drop of magical blood in their veins. And you know what? I don't particularly care. Call me a Mudblood---call me whatever you like. But I don't give a damn."  
  
Having worked herself into a frenzy, she shot him one last glare and set off towards the train with her trunk and her owl's cage in tow.  
  
"Adflictatio!" hissed a sneering voice behind her.  
  
She gasped as the curse hit her. Her trunk feel to the ground with a clunk and Drefan hooted wildly as his cage banged upon the bricks.  
  
Pain shot through her body, filling every pore and every vein with a fire that made her cry out in terror. She writhed on the ground in utter agony, wishing that it would end---  
  
"Finite incantatem!" came a sudden voice behind her, and the curse was lifted.  
  
She raised her head weakly to look behind her.  
  
"My god! Never in my life---"  
  
An elderly witch was standing there, in the same black robes that most of the students wore, her hair pilled tightly in a bun atop her head. Though she probably would have been more of a kindly figure in different circumstances, the look of absolute fury on her face could be likened to a mother dragon as it gazes upon someone trying to steal its eggs.  
  
This seething expression was directed at none other than Malfoy, who had obviously been the one to cast the Adflictatio curse, as he still had his wand pointed towards Amara. He lowered it hastily.  
  
"Seventy points from Slytherin!" she yelled. "And a week's worth of detentions---"  
  
Malfoy looked furious at this alarming piece of news. "But, professor," he said, "term hasn't even started, you can't take away points---"  
  
"I'd like to see anyone try and stop me," said the professor, in a very quiet and very deadly tone of voice. Malfoy shut his mouth abruptly, seeming to sense that he was on very dangerous ground. "Aside from breaching a Ministry law on underage magic, Mister Malfoy, you have just performed a highly dangerous and highly illegal dark curse on the first student to transfer to Hogwarts from another school in a hundred years. I am not going to ask where you learned such a curse... I can, however, tell you that you will be very lucky if you are not expelled. Unfortunately this matter lies not with me, but with your head of house---" Looking very irritated at this, the witch put a hand on Malfoy's shoulder and steered him silently towards Amara.  
  
Malfoy, despite the fact that he was obviously in very serious trouble, didn't look all that daunted. He cast a glare, laced with hatred, at Amara. The professor, still fuming at him, came to a stop in front of her and held out a hand to help her up.  
  
"I'm very sorry, my dear, that you had to undergo that," said the professor, casting a dark look at Malfoy.  
  
"Its fine," Amara mumbled. If people had been staring at her before, they were downright gaping at her now.  
  
"I'm Professor McGonagall," said the witch to her, somewhat distractedly. Amara felt her put a withered hand upon her shoulder as she directed both her and Malfoy to the train. "Come with me to the first compartment."  
  
Amara looked back once at Hermione and the two other boys, who had obviously been listening curiously to the entire proceedings. Hermione waved once at her and she managed to smile back weakly before McGonagall had levitated her trunk into the first compartment and she was forced to follow her inside.  
  
"Sit on the bench," McGonagall ordered to her and Malfoy. They did so, glaring at each other all the while. Amara, not prone to showing her emotions so obviously, eventually peeled her eyes off of him and looked around.  
  
For the small size of the compartment, it was fairly roomy on the inside, even when it was full of occupants. Although there were no other students inside it, there were two other adults besides McGonagall; a graying witch sitting beside a large wheeled and covered cart, and a sallow-skinned man in black robes who looked very familiar.  
  
"Professor Snape!" said Amara without thinking. She blushed as everyone's head turned her.  
  
"Yes," he said, very icily and coldly, "I have the pleasure of seeing you get in deep trouble on your very first day of term. What an incredible surprise."  
  
"May I remind you, Severus," said McGonagall sharply, "That it was Mr. Malfoy who cast the Dark curse, not Mrs. Aramanth."  
  
"Hogwarts students have every right to defend themselves---"  
  
"She had done nothing which warranted receiving such a curse!" said McGonagall, looking very angry indeed. "I was behind them, I saw what happened!"  
  
For the briefest of moments Snape got a strange, warning look on his face, which he flashed at McGonagall; then it was gone, to be replaced by his usual sneer. McGonagall, to Amara's surprise, shut her mouth abruptly at this look.  
  
"I'm sure whatever punishment you have already given Mr. Malfoy will be sufficient," said Snape curtly.  
  
"Tiffany," said McGonagall to the witch sitting besides the cart. She switched tactics at the speed of light. "May I have bit of chocolate for Ms. Aramanth? After that curse she certainly needs it..."  
  
"Of course!" said the witch called Tiffany. She quickly uncovered her cart to reveal a myriad supply of sweets and candies. Amara could feel her mouth watering just at the sight of them.  
  
She took a bar of chocolate off the bottom shelf and handed it to Amara. "Thanks," she muttered quietly, biting into it. Relief washed over her, making her feel much better.  
  
"There," said McGonagall, watching her closely as she took a seat besides Snape. "Are you feeling fine?"  
  
Amara nodded. She shot a glance at Malfoy, who had an arrogant, derisive sort of look on his face and had crossed his arms.  
  
"When am I going to be allowed to go back into the rest of the compartments?" he asked loudly.  
  
"Oh, I daresay that you can spend the rest of the ride to Hogwarts in this one," said McGonagall. Her eyes flashed a little as she set her eyes upon him. "We don't want you setting any more bad examples for the first years, after all." Malfoy, with anger glittering in his gray eyes, turned his head towards the window and looked outside, apparently finding the occupants of the compartment too unpleasant.  
  
Amara didn't ask whether or not she would be allowed back into the other compartments. She felt that on top of not wanting to sound like Malfoy, she didn't really want to sit with the other Hogwarts students anyway. She would only feel out of place with them.  
  
Still, she wouldn't have minded sitting with Hermione.  
  
A piercing whistle blew from the engine compartment ahead of them, and she felt the train start to move forward.  
  
Five minutes later she had taken out An Advanced Guide to Arithmancy and started reading it.  
  
About an hour later, the witch called Tiffany took a look at the magical watch on her wrist and jumped up. "Its time to pass out the refreshments, I suppose," she said, wheeling the cart towards the glass door of the compartment which led into the other ones. She paused at the threshold. "Would any of you like anything?"  
  
Malfoy looked as though he would very much have liked something, but for some reason he said nothing, only turning back the book he was reading.  
  
Amara opened her mouth uncertainly. "How much are the Cauldron Cakes?" she asked nervously.  
  
"One sickle and one knut," replied the witch.  
  
Relieved, Amara asked for two of them, taking out her small bag of money and dropping a few coins too many into the witch's hand.  
  
"Thank you, my dear!" said Tiffany, winking at her as she dropped the cakes into her hand and exited the compartment.  
  
Amara had already finished one of the cakes and was about to start on the next one when she paused. Seeing that Snape and McGonagall weren't paying any attention to her, she turned to Malfoy and said softly, "Do you want one?"  
  
"What?" said Malfoy, incredulously. Amara saw that the two professors had not noticed them talking to each other; she was afraid that they would make a big deal of it if they did.  
  
"Do you want the other Cauldron Cake?" she repeated.  
  
Amara was not sure exactly why she was offering the food to the same person who had cast such a painful Dark Arts curse on her only an hour before. All she knew was that it felt rude to snack on such delicious chocolate when no one else in the compartment had anything to eat.  
  
"If I wanted any I would have gotten some from the witch when she asked," Malfoy hissed, his eyes flashing. "If you think I would take it from a bloody Mudblood like you---"  
  
A hot, sizzling sort of anger rose up in Amara's throat at the word "Mudblood." She bit off the rude reply on the tip of her tongue, and said "Nevermind then, I shouldn't have asked," in a very icy, clipped sort of tone. As both professors Snape and McGonagall turned to look at her she lowered her eyes furiously back to her book and started eating the second Cauldron Cake herself.  
  
**********  
  
"Professor?"  
  
Minerva McGonagall was started out of her reverie by the sound a high- pitched, tremulous feminine voice. Her amber eyes flashed open as she looked towards the speaker.  
  
It was the transfer student, the fifth year. She was sitting thinly at her bench with an enormous book in her lap, looking up at her with large turquoise eyes. She reminded Minerva almost of herself in her childhood, with her oversized spectacles somehow fitting aptly with the thick Arithmancy book.  
  
"How did Professor Dumbledore decide what classes I'm to take?" asked Aramanth curiously to her. Minerva could tell that Malfoy, for all engrossment with his own book, was listening raptly to the conversation.  
  
"The classes you took at Salem were on your transfer forms, along with your grades," said Minerva crisply. "If I remember correctly, you were put into all advanced classes except for charms and divination."  
  
"Including---Advanced Arithmancy?" asked Aramanth, with somewhat bated breath. By the look on her face Minerva could tell that it was her favorite subject.  
  
"Yes," said Minerva with a rare hint of a smile.  
  
Aramanth let out an audible sigh of relief and went back to her book. In only a few minutes, however, she had another question to ask. "Professor?"  
  
"Yes?" asked Minerva, a little exasperated.  
  
"Do Hogwarts professors normally take the train?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Then. er. why did you two take it?" the girl asked, her eyes flickering to Snape, who hadn't said a word since the train had started moving.  
  
Minerva flashed the briefest of glances in Snape's direction before turning her eyes back to Aramanth. "There are usually one or two professors on the train, to make sure the ride goes as planned," she said, neglecting to mention that this was the first year Dumbledore had required both her and Snape to ride the Hogwarts Express at one time. "Normally we just stay in a compartment, but when I saw what was happening outside." She let her voice drift off slightly, and, with relief, saw Aramanth's eyes wander back to the complicated-looking mass of symbols she had previously been staring at, presumably sensing that she wasn't going to get an answer.  
  
"Shouldn't you change into your Hogwarts robes, Ms. Aramanth?" said McGonagall suddenly.  
  
The girl, blushing, looked down at the t-shirt and jeans she had been wearing, nodded hastily, and departed into the changing room at the back of the compartment with a pile of black robes hanging from her hands.  
  
**********  
  
It wasn't until about an hour later that Amara found herself standing in front of Professor McGonagall with a gaggle of whispering first-years, right in front of Hogwarts two enormous front doors. The castle had instantly mesmerized her with its great stone towers and walls; it was both massively huge and enchantingly beautiful, surrounded by a forest and a lake and even a little hut with smoke coming out of its chimney.  
  
"First years!" said McGonagall. She looked crisp and well defined; she was wearing neat black robes and a gold-and-red scarf, and her hair was piled atop her head in a tight bun. She nodded at Amara to show that she was including her in her specific greeting. "Welcome to Hogwarts! The start-of- term banquet will begin in just a few minutes, but before you take your places in the Great Hall, you will needed to be sorted into your houses."  
  
Amara readied herself for what was doubtless going to be a long, elaborate, and---since she had already read all about Hogwarts---rather boring speech.  
  
"The Sorting is a very important ceremony," continued McGonagall. "The four houses are Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Slytherin, and Hufflepuff. Your house will be somewhat like your family at Hogwarts; you will have classes with the rest of your house, sleep in your house dormitory, and spend free time in your house's Common Room. Each house has its own history, and has produced outstanding witches and wizards. I expect you all to treat your classmates, especially the ones in the other houses, with the utmost respect."  
  
Amara saw some of the first-years glance furtively at each other, as if they knew that this was a very unlikely possibility.  
  
"Your triumphs at Hogwarts will earn points for your house, while any rule- breaking will result in points being taken away. At the end of the year, the house with the most points will be awarded the house cup.  
  
"We will now proceed into the Entrance Hall," finished McGonagall as she pulled open the great doors. They creaked forlornly. "In just a few moments, we will proceed into the Great Hall, where the Sorting will take place."  
  
Amara lingered with the first-years in the Entrance Hall while McGonagall left, presumably to inform the Headmaster that they were nearly ready to be Sorted. Feeling her nerves and apprehension mount, she watched as McGonagall finally came back and, opening the large double doors of the Great Hall, led them into the cavernous room...  
  
Amara found herself feeling very out of place as she entered the castle that was to be her home for the next three years. The Great Hall was an enormous room occupied by five large tables; four for each of the houses, apparently, and one for the staff. All of the tables were nearly full, and the moment the doors opened, every student and every teacher raised their eyes to the first years. Amara, being by far the oldest of the group, was inevitably the cause of many a stare and whisper on the student's behalf.  
  
"Who's she?"  
  
"Why does she look so old? She can't be a first year---"  
  
"She looks like a bloody Mudblood, probably will be a Gryffindor---"  
  
"She is a Mudblood---"  
  
Amara felt her heart skip a beat at the last snip of conversation that reached her ears. She glanced towards the very last house table, the one decorated lavishly with green and silver banners entwined with snakes, and saw Malfoy sitting at its head, surrounded by whispering followers like a king with his court assembled.  
  
Slytherin, thought Amara darkly, remembering the house from Hogwarts, A History.  
  
She had been very curious to how everyone would be Sorted; now she was starting to guess. A ragged looking hat with a large rip in its side was sitting on a stool in front of them. To her absolute, utter horror, the rip opened a little wider and it started singing.  
  
For the whole of five minutes she listened to the song; it sounded as though the poor inanimate object had been forced to make up a rhyming poem about the qualities of the four houses and then, when it tried to sing it, only could manage it in a pitch that was quite definitely very off-key.  
  
After a while, however, she started to notice how some things in the song didn't quite fit with the houses theme.  
  
Now its song had a darker tone (in more of a minor key, if you will, thought Amara). It spoke of a war, of troubling times ahead.  
  
What is this? wondered Amara, looking around at the grim and pale faces surrounding her. Even the first years looked worried. It's as if something very drastic and terrible is going on, and everyone is worried for their lives.  
  
As her gaze fell upon each different houses---which, thanks to a combination of the bit of light reading she had done on the train and the hat's ridiculous song, she could now identify in turn---she could help but notice the Slytherins. Their expressions were worried, their faces pale, their demeanors heavy. All of the houses---the Gryffindors in particular--- looked strangely subdued; but the Slytherins were by far the worst.  
  
She raised her eyes and, by the merest chance, they fell upon the staff table, and the pale, greasy-haired man sitting by the Slytherins. He caught her eye, and for the briefest of moments she thought that something might have passed between them, some acknowledgement between teacher and student of the fear and silence growing in the green and silver section of the room. Then the potions professor blinked and looked away, and she was forced to wonder if she had only imagined it all.  
  
She pulled her eyes back to the Sorting Hat, with difficulty, and saw that the first-years names were already being called. They each went up to the hat, pulled it over the small heads, and waited for it to decide where they belonged; then it would scream out their house's name for all the world to hear.  
  
What house will I be in? thought Amara recklessly. Not Gryffindor, I'm not brave. maybe Hufflepuff? Or Ravenclaw? I certainly don't have enough ambition to be in Slytherin---they probably don't let Muggleborns in there anyway---  
  
She realized with a jolt that McGonagall, reading off of a long scroll in her hand, had just called "Veralin, Isabella" (a Ravenclaw) to the hat and that she was sure to reach the end of the alphabet very quickly. Amara should have known that the professor would call out her own name separate from all the others, seeing that she was a transfer student.  
  
True to her premonitions, McGonagall stopped suddenly to address the school.  
  
"And this," she said, "is Amara Aramanth, a transfer-student from the Salem Academy of Magic. She will be a fifth-year."  
  
She gestured for her to go to the hat.  
  
Amara walked, slowly and fearfully, to the stool with the hat. She picked it up, put it roughly upon her head, and sat down.  
  
My, my, said an eager voice in her mind. What do we have here?  
  
I don't know, thought Amara a bit irritably. Fear of what would happen once she was forced to sit with the other students filled her mind, nearly choking her. What do we have?  
  
Interesting, very interesting.  
  
What's interesting? wondered Amara.  
  
Very inquisitive mind you've got there, said the hat. A Ravenclaw's mind. But with a dash of loyalty as well, the mark of a Hufflepuff. and. my, my, what do we have here?  
  
I know I'm not going to be in Gryffindor or Slytherin, just sort me already.  
  
Not in Slytherin? repeated the hat, and Amara was surprised to hear that it sounded amused. Ah---no ambition, you say?  
  
Not a drop, Amara thought.  
  
But surely, thought the hat, and she could almost feel the wheels of its own strange mind turning, you want to prove yourself?  
  
Amara felt like she was being manipulated.  
  
Surely, said that sly voice in her mind, You want to go out there where all those students are waiting, and prove to them that you are not some foolish child to be toyed with, that you are everything that they are and more, that pure blood counts for nothing when intelligence is concerned.  
  
Yes, thought Amara excitedly, without thinking. Yes! If only they knew, what I was like on the inside---  
  
It's a shame, thought the hat. You're so interesting, I almost don't want you to take me off. it's a pity.  
  
"SLYTHERIN!" shouted the hat.  
  
For a moment, Amara had the time to feel numb with shock. Slytherin? How could she have been sent to Slytherin, the same house as Malfoy? Feeling dizzy, Amara pulled the hat off of her head and set it back on the bench. There was a strange kind of silence ringing in the Great Hall, as if no one had expected her to get sorted into that particular house. She caught Hermione Granger's eye, and saw her flash a strange, confused look at her---  
  
And then she had reached the Slytherin table. Aware of the dirty looks she was receiving from them, and the fact that the only people who had clapped for her had been the professors, Amara sat as far as Malfoy as possible (at the other end of the table, which was completely empty).  
  
An utter sadness washed down upon her as she sat there, staring at her plate. For someone who had always felt uncomfortably alone and antisocial, Amara now felt more alone than she'd ever felt in her life. She really had not expected to get into Slytherin.  
  
In a hall choked with students until it was nearly full, Amara was all of four feet away from the closest Slytherin, a sixth or seventh year who kept tossing her suspicious side glances. Apparently, sitting so close to a Mudblood made him nervous.  
  
Amara looked glumly down at her plate, not daring to look about her surroundings. She barely even heard the welcome speech administered by the old, white-bearded headmaster; she barely even noticed her food. The only thing in her mind at the moment was going home. She wanted to go home to her father's warm arms, and she wanted it very badly. She didn't feel like she could wait for Christmas. She needed to go home right now...  
  
She chanced a fleeting glance up, towards the other Slytherins, and saw something that made her spirits rise ever so slightly and the tingling of hope begin to stir in her chest. A dark-haired, brown-eyed boy sitting not far away met her eyes as she looked up, and flashed her a charming, reassuring sort of smile.  
  
Amara saw a shiny gold badge on his chest that read "Prefect," and it occurred to her that he was probably just being nice because it was his job- --he was supposed to befriend the new students, she supposed. But she didn't care. It was the first Slytherin-based act of kindness that she'd seen apart from the incident in which Snape had repaired her glasses, and she was grateful for it. She grinned back at him in a self-deprecatory kind of way.  
  
It seem to take a very long time for the people around her to finish with their dinner, though she supposed that time went more quickly for those who were enjoying themselves. Eventually the same prefect who had smiled at her began to gather the first-years and lead them away from the table. Having heard about the Slytherin Common Room in the long and detailed conversations of the Slytherins nearest to her, Amara thought it best to follow them, knowing that it wasn't likely she would ever find out the password otherwise.  
  
She followed closely behind the tight group of first-years, with enough discretion in the matter of the volume of her footsteps so that they didn't seem to notice her. They went through a tricky series of corridors that she was sure she would never remember and then down a long passageway of descending spiral steps, into a cold, restricted hallway that must have been part of the dungeons.  
  
I'm sleeping in a dungeon? thought Amara, with a thrill of foreboding.  
  
The black-haired seventh-year prefect finally came to a stop in front of a cold, bare wall. "Dies amaritundinis," he hissed at it in a low voice. It must have been a password, for the wall opened up with a shallow grating sound to make an entrance big enough for a good-sized student to step through.  
  
As all the first-years and Amara slid through the hole, she could hear it closing behind them.  
  
She found herself in a dimly lit, circular room cast in a greenish sort of light. Straight-backed silver chairs lined the walls; already people arriving from the feast had begun to fill them. The only heat in the room came from a small, crackling fireplace in one side of the room. Glancing towards it, she saw that Malfoy. Draco Malfoy, she had heard him called. had already reserved the seat nearest to the fire for himself.  
  
What a surprise, thought Amara, very darkly.  
  
She saw all of the Slytherins sitting around the Common Room giving her strange, filthy looks.  
  
Amara had began to wonder with a terribly sinking feeling how she would know where her dormitories were, if no one was going to tell her; then she saw a short, plump girl with pigtails approaching her haughtily. She wore her blonde hair down in two pigtails at either side, and had coated her pale, pointed face with what must have been at least three layers of solid make-up.  
  
"Our dormitories are over there," she said with a contemptuous sneer at her, pointing in the opposite direction of the fire, towards a spiral staircase. "I didn't ask to have a stinking Mudblood move in with us, but then I guess I don't have much choice in the matter. it's the third door on the left," she added, stalking away haughtily.  
  
It was through a somewhat blurred and hazy world that Amara heard the cruel laughter of the Slytherins around her. She could feel her throat constricting and her heart sinking, but she still managed to force her expression into one of utter nonchalance. Her face was completely devoid of the sick, angry, and turbulent emotions she could feel whirling inside herself---  
  
Suddenly, the reason for her potion's master's bitter, heavily guarded personality was being made all too clear.  
  
Amara realized that her face was not quite so as expressionless as she had first thought. Sneering contemptuously at the mixture of students around her with a mask of hatred that matched their own, Amara turned on her heel and marched up to the dormitory the girl had pointed out to her, carrying her trunk. When she had found the third door on the left she pulled it open vehemently, and immediately found her own bed, the only one devoid of belongings.  
  
Hauling her trunk and her indignant owl down beside it, she threw herself onto the green-and-silver mattress and clutched the pillow as if it were the only thing left to her in the world, tears leaking silently onto the sheets. 


End file.
